Resources

Arts Council England is the national arts development agency for England, supporting a range of artistic activities from theatre to music, literature to dance, photography to digital art, carnival to crafts. It distributed both grant-in-aid and Lottery money.

This link offers a succinct outline of how Arts Council England assesses artistic quality.

The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange is a professional company of dance artists, founded in 1976 and based in Maryland, USA. The company develops new work, carries out workshop programmes and leads national dance projects.

The US dancer Liz Lerman developed her Critical Response Process in the 1990s as a method to develop artistic works-in-progress through a four-step, facilitated dialogue between artists, peers, and audiences. It is widely used by arts organisations, educators and managers.

NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) is a Non-Departmental Public Body, accountable to Parliament and funded by means of a 300m endowment to foster innovation in tackling the country's social and economic challenges. It works in partnership with private and third sector organisations.

The 'Innovation in Arts and Cultural Organisations' interim report (December 2009) by Hasan Bakhshi and David Throsby, explores the meaning of familiar business concepts such as competitive advantage, product development, business models etc., from the point of view of arts organisations. It draws heavily on experimental case studies of the National Theatre and Tate.

VAGA (the Visual Arts and Galleries Association), is an independent organisation promoting the visual arts in the UK, operating as a professional network with a UK-wide membership of organisations and individuals. Parts of its website, including some resources, are accessible only to members.

REALISE is a campaign to advocate the "right to art", lobbying for "the placement of art at the heart of people's lives, public policy and the political debate". Its steering group comprises a number of high-level gallery and visual arts leaders.